


Amenities & Exigencies

by somekindofseizure



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s10e03 Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster, Hotel Sex, MSR, The X-Files Revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 05:44:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5955862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somekindofseizure/pseuds/somekindofseizure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder gets to pick the hotel after having to leave the motel in Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amenities & Exigencies

 

“First thing we have to do though, is check out of this motel,” he’d said.  

“I’ll handle it while you pack your stuff,” Scully said.

She wanted him out of the room.  She’d been sitting with her knees squeezed tightly together since he came in. His monologue, though charming, had turned into a pilates session she didn’t sign up for.

“No, I’ll do it,” he said.   “While _you_ put something on under that t-shirt.”  Mulder really was back to his old self – cataloguing outrageously baseless theories and the state of her underwear all at once.

Giving him the reins to the case was one thing, handing over accommodation duties was another.  Mulder’s genius didn’t generally apply to the mundane aspects of the universe.  He was too easily distracted by things:  Say, lizards that shoot blood out their eyes.  But she figured whatever scratchy blanket, cigarette-smoke smelling, moldy tub hellhole she wound up in, she’d rather grin and bear it than be responsible for sending Mulder spiraling back into depression by stealing his moment of thunder.   _He wants to do it, he can do it._

Besides, she told herself, the night was well under way and they didn’t have much more time to spend wherever they landed.  She would just be crawling into bed and passing out.   She wondered if she would wake up to find this Mulder, _her_ Mulder  - she hadn’t meant it to come out that way - or if he would be gone, the rambling and pacing nothing more than a fond, if ludicrous memory.

 

***

 

She had dozed off.  His eyes were on the road, searching for the turn, so he hadn’t looked yet - but the quality of her breathing was a dead giveaway.  He could tell the difference between her trying to sleep, fake sleeping and actually sleeping.  He’d mastered this even before they officially shared a bed.   Fox Mulder, expert profiler of Scully’s lung function.  Yet another distinction he hadn’t put to very good use.  

Still in her oversized t-shirt under a coat, bare feet curled onto the seat with her, she looked like a feverish kid being dragged to the doctor’s office.   Wait, he knew that t-shirt.  It was his.  He pried himself from thoughts of it touching her bare legs, only to step aboard an even more tempting train of thought – when had she taken it?  What had they been doing?  What other lifetime had it been?  

He reached to turn on the radio, needing something other than fragments of the past and the droning of the car to distract him.  He checked to make sure the music didn’t wake her and thought of of how many times he had looked over his left shoulder and seen this exact picture – this person, adrift in a sound sleep, cheek cradled by a seatbelt her chin couldn’t clear, soon to wake with an angry line across her face.  Mostly, he had taken it for granted, not knowing what such a sight would be worth to him someday.  

 

***

 

Scully was keenly attuned to the sensation of a car turning off.  She woke oblivious and cranky.  “Why are you looking at me like that?  Is there a line on my face?”  He shook his head.

Like just about every other motel she’d been with Mulder, she was dreading stepping foot in this place, and there was only one way to get through it.  Skip the once-over.   Do not look out the window.  Unbuckle seatbelt, put shoes back on, delegate responsibilities.   “Do you want to check in or get the bags?” she asked.

The handle on her door clicked and she spun baring teeth, terrifying the perpetrator at the open door.  He wore a white shirt and little black vest.

“Sorry about that, she’s a little on edge,” Mulder said.  

“Checking in?”

“No, there must be some mistake.  Mulder, did you get lost?”

Mulder leaned over her to look at the valet.  “Yes, we reserved online,” he said as he popped the trunk.  “Would you mind?”  The valet rushed to the trunk.  Scully looked at Mulder like he himself was shooting blood out his eyes.

“Mulder, where the hell are we?”

She peeked past the door.  They were at a hotel.  Not a motel-- a very, very nice hotel.

“The _X Hotel_ in Portland, Scully.  It’s only an hour outside of Shawan.”

“There was a Comfort Inn seven minutes from that creep-shack you begged me to stay at for its _character_.”

“How do you know?  You looked it up after I left the room, didn’t you?”

“Force of habit,” she said.  He was undaunted by this obvious clue that she didn’t trust him.  He was pretty confident he had nailed this one.

“I know you like the coffee at the Comfort Inn, Scully, but I’m guessing this place can compete.”

“The budget’s not going to cover this.”

“That’s okay, I’m employed again.”

She pulled her door shut again.  “Mulder, knock it off, I’m tired.  Stop that vest guy.  Let’s go to the motel.  I’m tired.”

“You said that already.”

“It bore repeating.”

Mulder showed her his phone - a purple screen with a picture of the hotel.   “I have this hotel app, it gets you deals.”    

She rolled her eyes, quickly stepping out of the car as she tried to wipe the smile off her face.  He leaned over the console grinning.

“Guess the internet’s pretty good for me after all,” he said.  She closed the door with more energy than anyone who was sleeping five minutes ago should have.

 

***

 

They rode a shiny elevator to the eleventh floor in eerie silence.  A dimly lit luxury hotel that smelled like gardenias and whose every piece of furniture, décor, and lighting said, “Make out with me,” was – suffice it to say – not exactly their element. They were raw and exhausted and the deliberate sensuality of the place fell like a clumsy burden upon their shoulders.  The awkwardness of it recalled the ancient past, times when they’d found themselves somewhere more romantic they had signed up for – under shooting stars, in a beautiful field at sunset, in the solitude of a golden desert.  Situations you dreamed you’d be in one day, but when it happened, you found some reason to be resentful.  Anyway, back then, it was clear what they were supposed to do. Draw and redraw that line in the sand. Obey it at all costs.  Since they’d started working together again, Scully hadn’t taken the time to figure out the new directive, and Lord knew Mulder wouldn’t, so the particular shininess of this elevator to heaven was making her anxious.

Mulder slipped the key card in and out of the slot and opened the door.  Scully cleared her throat and stepped into the room, trying not to swoon.  The walls were mirrored and floor to ceiling windows revealed a shimmering metropolis at their feet.  She had never thought she’d be so happy to see an eight dollar bottle of water.  On the bed there were Italian linens and two pieces of dark chocolate.  She unwrapped one.  The room had everything - everything except an extra bed.

“Well…” she started, getting her _we’re rational adults_ speech ready (one she recited often, even though she knew only one of them was a rational adult).  Mulder shuffled the papers in his hand and took out another shiny white card.  He dropped it into her coat pocket.

“Your room’s next door.”

 

***

 

He could tell by her smile that he’d finally put her at ease.  She wheeled her small bag past him, reaching briefly for his forearm without looking at him.  Scully hated thank yous; when they weren’t needed, it was disingenuous, and when they were needed, it was never enough.  Her sense of precision and authenticity took no prisoners.

He thought he caught her scent as she moved past him – the shampoo she used that did not produce the same effect in his short hair, the mountain spring detergent she claimed to use that he could never seem to find on the shelves. He swore she was mixing up in a cauldron somewhere herself.  

“You smell good.  You didn’t shower at that place, did you?  Who knows where that proprietor poked holes,” he said, as she reached the door. Without looking back, she pointed at a tray of goodies beside the flatscreen TV.

“It’s the candle.”  

When the door shut, Mulder sauntered proudly over to the tray – he had actually pulled this off, they were staying here. He picked up the candle they wanted him to cough up thirty dollars for and sniffed it. She was right.  Goddammit, now he probably _would_ buy it, having associated it with her.  He flipped through the rest of the offerings – snacks of course.  Also condoms and sex toys.  “Classy hotels just aren’t what they used to be,” he mumbled, amusing himself.   He wondered if Scully was checking this out next door.  Scoffing regally at the idea of a fifty dollar souvenir vibrator.

 

***

 

The lights had been on only momentarily while she placed her things carefully in their place – the bathroom counter, the desk, the nightstand, the closet. Clues of her existence, moved from motel to motel to motel, she thought. And on one really shitty day, from their home to a one-bedroom apartment.  

It was dark and well past her bedtime, but sleeping seemed like a waste in a room like this.  She sat up in the crisp duvet, dressed now in pajamas of her own.  She had gotten caught in Mulder’s t-shirt earlier.  He seemed willing to let her pretend it didn’t happen.  Or maybe he was holding onto it to use against her later.  She walked toward the window, looking out over the city, thinking of all the people she couldn’t see and realized more importantly – _they_ couldn’t see _her_.  

She wrapped her arms around the bottom of the shirt, pulling it over her head, ignoring the buttons.   She stood naked at the window, temperature of the room settling around her, adjusting to her nakedness rather than the other way around.  It started as innocently as that - a simple pleasure, a moment of mindfulness, taking comfort in her own skin.  But as she searched her reflection, she saw something that had been missing for some time now, and it sent a shiver down her spine.  Her nipples perked and the arches of her feet fell heavy. The strands of her hair tingled along her shoulders.  

Her mind wandered to the other side of the wall.  She was frustrated with herself – below her a weird and beautiful little city, countless unknown stories to fantasize about, and here she was thinking of someone she had flossed beside for years.

But not a single one of the images in her head had him flossing.

She lit her candle, the glow flashing in her pupils and matching the feeling in the pit of her stomach.  She lifted out the shiny white box.  It was a little bullet, more futuristic looking than the ones she used to have.  Mulder hadn’t left her alone enough and when he did, she would find the battery fluid seeping into the works.  Then, when she left him, she couldn’t bring herself to buy a new one.  Maybe when she was done punishing herself.  Or when she was ready to admit it was really over. But this one was just an _amenity_ – it required no such symbolic commitment.

She dropped the tiny batteries into the tunnel and screwed on the top nimbly.  She meant to go to the bed, but something drew her back to the window.  She took a deep breath, warming the vibrator in her palm. “This better be good,” she thought.  “A fifty dollar orgasm, and no one’s even screaming my name.”  Pressing the button, she lowered it between her legs, felt the plastic slide over her pubic bone, deep between her thighs.  It found her damp and ready.  She sighed in gratitude, let her eyes shut, a passive witness to her body’s takeover.  She tented her left hand against the window, her elbow against her ribs, as she brought the other hand –the working hand - back from its exploratory journey to its rightful throne. _I should do this more often_ , she thought as she opened her eyes.

She circled and circled, stirring pleasure from deep inside her up to the surface.  She stared, feeling unrecognizable in the sleek, dark reflective surface.  This person looking back at her was – she hesitated, but the thumping sensation in her groin egged her on – _she was sexy_.  Scrambling for something to hang her cravings on, she went to her most convenient thought – her safety fantasy, and yet, the riskiest of all.  

She pictured him watching her through a peephole like the one at that horrible motel, this time leaning a forearm on their shared wall, his cock in his right hand, his clean fingernails - _oohhhh, his clean fingernails -_ tapping involuntarily around his skin as if finding the perfect grip on a baseball bat.   _Mulder’s dick… baseball bat_ … she moaned and noted it was the first audible sound she’d made, trying to keep herself in check. Her mind went back to his long fingers – _tapping, gripping, tapping_ \- and she smiled to herself.  If she came tonight thinking of baseball, it would be very difficult not to brag about it to Mulder.  

Her forehead tipped forward against the window now, allowing her spine to soften and nipples to touch the glass.  They contracted at the sudden coolness, and then spread as she leaned harder into the flat surface, resting her cheek on it for relief, looking at the shared wall between their rooms with squinted eyes.   _If I look hard enough maybe I can make it so._  

Her legs tightened around her hand, the plastic holding its own as she clamped around it. And then, just like that, she was on the precipice.  “Oh Gooooddd,” she groaned into the steam on the glass, her fingers raking stripes through it.  She knew the vibrator wouldn’t finish her tonight – she wanted his hand too badly. She’d have to settle for her own.

 

***

 

Nature had called and woken him up after a brief snooze. He stepped out of the bathroom in his boxer briefs, about to close the shades, annoyed by the city lights, knowing full well that Scully would sleep with them open.  See, this is why it was better they were apart now.  And that’s when he realized what had actually woken him. A moan – no, not “a moan.”  Scully.  Moaning.   His heart beat faster and he licked his lips.  He suddenly wanted to jump through the wall, his stiffening erection both paralyzing and all-motivating.   _If I were a younger man_ , he thought, but then he finished the thought – he’d be doing exactly this, hiding on the other side of the wall.  That’s exactly what he did when he was a younger man.

He used to think he heard her all the time when they traveled.  Girls had to do it too, right?   Most of the time he decided Scully was too disciplined to mix work and pleasure.  But now, he knew what Scully sounded like when she was turned on, he knew she had less control over what pleased her than she would have liked.  Most critically, he knew that the noise coming through this wall right now was, in fact, the sound of Scully touching herself.

He could barely take it - the voice he’d been hearing in his head so hauntingly now was really there.  He stepped closer to the wall and felt a wave of selflessness - Scully was happy right now.  And then his pleasure became selfish as he wrapped his hand around his very solid dick, intent on release.  But it was all spoiled when it suddenly occurred to him that the pleasure of someone _else_ might be involved.  

In fact, for a moment, he was sure she wasn’t alone.  She was having too much fun.  He scrunched his face, trying harder to hear the intruder.  But he could only hear a woman’s voice.  Maybe it was two women’s voices.  Scully was fucking a woman!  In a hotel room next to him!  His erection stretched out ambitiously as he pictured Scully’s tight little body, pressed against a stranger’s breasts, or Scully’s strong legs framing a mane of long hair.   _The girl at the front desk… She had been wearing a button down shirt…  Scully’s peeling it open right now_.  No, Scully was ripping it over her head; she had no patience for buttons.  Suddenly, he shook his head, as if to scare off his thoughts.  He took his hand off his erection.

She was here tonight and that was enough.  He didn’t want to embellish.  He could make shit up every other night of the week.

He placed his palms against the wall, solemnly letting his forehead fall to the wall and peeling his ears.  They were on a stakeout together, he and Scully, only she didn’t know it.  She breathed hard, vocal chords vibrating thickly and throatily.  He heard the sound of a steady motor too – the combination of it and Scully’s voice had him in a trance.

He took his dick back into his hand, using the rhythm of her breath as his metronome.  He sighed loudly into the thick wallpaper, imagining her beautiful face thrown back ecstatically.   The sweat collecting on her chest as her freckles deepened, the way she always brought one hand to her forehead as she came, like a Southern belle fainting, even as she hammered out strings of filthy words she rarely said otherwise.  

Her breath suddenly hitched, stopped, but he could hear the motor purring even faster.   “Oh Gooooddd,” she let out, and then he thought – he couldn’t be sure – “Make me come.”  He stifled his mouth against his arm so as not to be heard, and thought only of her…

_Fucking her in that bed…_

_…fucking her against this wall_

_…fucking her against that glass window._

He thought of all the hotel beds, walls, glass windows he had not used for this purpose.  He pictured her naked in as many of the ugly, ratted rooms as he could remember.  She was too good for them, for him, really, but the knowledge of that only made him want her more…  

He was done – they both were – and there were no sounds now.  She was so quiet, in fact, that he began to think he’d dreamt it.  And then she piped up in a sweet, heady voice, a note of surprise in it.  “Fuck,” she said.  If he were a younger man, that one syllable would have been enough to make him go all over again.   If he were a younger man, he would tell himself to pull himself together before he lost her.

 

***

 

When the case was wrapped up the next day, they headed back to the hotel to check out.  They seemed to be in good moods all around – her, him, the dog in the backseat.  That little bastard was going to get to cuddle with her.  He turned down the radio, leaving only Scully’s voice singing along.

 “Hey,” she protested.

“Why don’t we stay another night?”

“Why?  Because we’re done.”

“I have the deal.”

“It’s not a deal if you don’t need it at all in the first place.”

“That is the single most practical, boring thing you’ve ever said.  Don’t we deserve it?  Get away a little?”

 “Get away.  You want to get away. Fox Mulder.  Away from work.”

“I’m afraid going back to the house will be too depressing,” he said with a twinge of guilt, intentionally tugging her heartstrings.

“Well… I guess they’ll never know we didn’t find out he was a lying were lizard tomorrow instead of today, ” she said.  He looked at her.  

“Dana Scully wants to lie on her official report,” he chimed.

“How official can any report be when it has the phrase, ‘ _At that point Agent Mulder and I stumbled upon the suspect using a port-a-potty’_ in it?”

“If we do this, there’s no work talk, no work thoughts.”  

“I think I can manage.  I haven’t gotten a chance to use the bathtub yet.  Or room service.  I wonder what else they have,” she wondered aloud as innocently as a kid in a toy store.

He turned the radio back up, her innocence a slight nuisance to him.  She wasn’t thinking about him or his dick or sex or anything that currently interested him.

 “Oh!  What about the dog?” she piped up.  Was she _trying_ to piss him off?

“I already checked.  They don’t allow them in the rooms, but they have a fancy dogsitting service in the lobby.  You can visit him anytime you want.”

“Good.  I think I’m already quite attached.”

He exhaled his annoyance with this topic, reached for the sexiest change of subject he could get away with and came up with -  

“You know, the lying were-lizard, he told me some interesting lies.”

 _No way way is this going anywhere remotely interesting_ , said her face.  “Do you want to put the baseball game on or something, Mulder?” she asked with a sort of strange smirk.  He was a man on a mission.

“He told me you two… you know.”

 “What?”

“Did it.”

“Me and the were-lizard had sex.”

“Yes.”

“Why is that interesting?” she asked very drily.  

“Because he had such explicit detail.”        

His accusatory tone pricked the hairs up off her arm.  He could practically feel her tail stand up, reach over and smack him in the nose.  “ _What_ details?”

“Well, I don’t want to embarrass you, Scully, but he said you seductively unbuttoned your blouse in the store, revealing some kind of racy bra, and led him into the stock room with a come hither voice.”  

She scoffed.  “I don’t have a come hither voice.”

“Yes, you do,” he said, laughing a little.  She had let him flirt – this was a good sign.  “He said he did you up against the wall.  You were loud, you told him he was an animal.”  She flushed, cheeks turning a deep shade of pink. More out of anger probably than arousal, he guessed, but he was willing to risk it.  

“Well, that’s obviously ridiculous.  You know I don’t have patience for buttons.”

He felt somewhat satisfied.  If he could get her mind into the gutter with his even for a moment, it was like an acknowledgement that last night had really happened.  He didn’t want it to just vanish.  Suddenly in the past few days, it seemed to him their whole life had vanished while he wasn’t paying attention.  

“Why are you even telling me this?” she asked.

He couldn’t very well say, “I heard you masturbating in the hotel last night and it made me jizz up the expensive wallpaper.”  So he said, “I thought you might be flattered.  He could have lied about screwing about any human woman he wanted. He had just gotten here and the world was his oyster.  He picked you, Scully.”

“He also picked a mobile phone store.”      

“Still.  It’s something.”

“Mulder, I wasn’t looking for an ego boost and if I was, I wouldn’t be looking somewhere they also give you a free month of data with a two year contract.”

He was quiet a few moments.  “ _I_ would’ve picked you,” he said, his sincerity sounding foreign on his own ears.

He immediately regretted it, hoped she would consider it part of his obnoxious crusade to embarrass her.  But he heard the tip of her tongue between her lips, gently clicking saliva against her teeth, one of his favorite things in the fucking world.   _Come on,_ he thought _, say something, please.  Look at me_.  But she was stoically staring out the window, her breath so stable and volume-less there could have been a wall between them.

 

***

 

Mulder called the spa almost immediately when he got back to his room.  The voice on the other end said they had one appointment left.  But she quickly reneged, covering the mouthpiece hastily to speak to co-worker.  “I’m sorry, someone’s just stopped in and booked it.”  Mulder sighed dramatically.  His back was killing him from slouching against that headstone.   Suddenly, he remembered Scully was still downstairs checking Daggoo into the doggie hotel.                    

“Was it Dana Scully who just took that spot?”      

“Sir, we can’t, uh –“

“That’s my wife.  See, we got our wires crossed as to who was going to take care of booking this. You can put us in a room together if that makes it work.”

“Oh, ummm, sure…”

Hopefully Scully would understand.  

 

***

 

She had considered throwing a fit about this whole thing at first, but she knew Mulder’s lower back had been seizing up and she wasn’t about to deprive him the relief.  Especially when, in the past it had been her job to relieve it.   She wondered when this guilt would end.  She twirled her pointer finger at him, and they each faced their respective walls.  

“I’ll go first,” he said.  His platonic cordiality was so impressive she wondered a bit crankily if he still even wanted her.   _I mean, I don’t want him either_.  Sure, she had thought about him last night, but she was in the desperate throes of a very out of practice orgasm-quest. She had simply gone for the most accessible thing.

 _Sssssst_ , the sound of his robe slipping off his shoulders - there was nothing sexual or even sensual about this – _whoosh_ , his legs sliding under the sheet - this was a sterile, medical situation, Dana Scully.  

 

***

 

“Okay,” he said and heard her climb onto her table. He waited for her to settle and then lifted his head very quietly to see her bare shoulders, arms up around her face. That smooth slope from her elbow, down the sensitive skin of her under arm, the sides of her breast – he had forgotten about it – Shit, he thought.  This was maybe not the best idea. A massage next to someone he had fantasized about to completion just twelve hours ago.

When the hour was up, and the therapists had left the room, they instinctively turned their faces to one another.  Scully’s fair skin was flushed, her lids heavy, hair flopped over her shoulder.  Thankfully, the therapist had turned him into jelly or he might have tried to take her then and there.  This was an irritating tendency he had – to want Scully most when she had already been sated.   He corrected himself – the tendency was in the past, it was all over.  A lump rose in his throat.  What were they doing?   _We’re naked in this room together and trying to pretend it doesn’t matter?_ He glanced over his shoulder, saw only her bare back as she bent forward and put her spa slippers on.

Another thing he had forgotten he loved about her – she put her shoes on before shirts or dresses.  He used to think she did it for his benefit, allowing him to impress the view on his brain before taking it away from him for the day (but as she more than once pointed out – he tended to think everything was for him).   That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?   Wasn’t it the whole fucking point?  To spend your life with someone you wanted to watch tie their shoes.  He’d had it… and ruined it.  Or at least, been passive as it ruined itself.  

He offered to pay since she’d been a good sport about the co-ed experience, and to his surprise, she obliged.  He was not the only one who’d been turned into jelly, apparently.  When they exited into the corridor, she said she wanted to check on the dog again and duck into the hotel’s boutique.  “See? Now you can afford to pick yourself up something nice,” he said magnanimously.   

“I’m just going to be browsing, I wouldn’t have anything to wear the kinds of things they sell,” she said.

 

***

 

She felt a bit silly pulling the dress up around her hips in the bathroom mirror.  But by the time she was zipping it up, she had convinced herself of its rightful place in her life.  She shook her hair out, wearing it loose and wavy, and spread eyeliner across her lids, stepping into a pair of shoes that had, up ‘til this moment, no business being along for this trip.  She had become a star packer over the years, but a completely unnecessary pair of shoes was her secret vice.  

The phone rang – Mulder asking if she wanted food.  Embarrassed, she searched for an answer.  “Uh, I’m just going to do room service,” she stammered.  She didn’t know how to tell him what was really going on without feeling like a complete idiot.   _Good.  He’s leaving the building,_ she thought guiltily.

 

***

 

Mulder’s stomach was growling as he walked through the lobby on his way to Domino’s.  He had dallied, wondering if he should knock on her door, insist chummily they share the room service charge.  But she could have invited him if she wanted to, and he wasn’t about to spend twenty dollars to eat a burger alone in his room.   He marched out toward the street with a kick in his step, feeling he was completely winning at the contest of expensive hotels.  He pictured himself furiously wielding his app, conquering luxurious resorts all over the country with his civil service budget.

But suddenly his legs ceased to march, his stomach stopped roaring.  It was like a switch flipped to shut down all bodily functions and send blood to one appendage only.   He hadn’t experienced that room stopping, _duck behind a plant casually to gawk at a woman_ thing in years.  She was going into the hotel restaurant, her back to him.  If that could stop him in his tracks, he could only imagine what would happen when she turned around.  Standing amongst men in suit jackets in the dim golden light, crystal glasses glimmering just past the entrance, she was like a mirage in a sea of overhyped date nights.  And she looked so much like Scully that he feared she had branded him with a fetish for petite redheads.  When she turned, he saw that of course, she _was_ Scully.  It had been crazy for him not to have realized it, but he racked his memory angrily for a time he had seen her wear something like this.  Was this how she dressed now that she was rid of him?   Surely if she had owned anything like this before, he would have woken up and kept her there.  His eyes scanned her up and down, riding her body like an escalator.

She must have gotten the dress at the boutique.  It was black, and it was shiny… silk?  Satin?   Who fucking cared.  It was sleeveless.  Low cut. Tight.  Godfuckingdammit, it was tight.  It hugged her torso, clenched her little waist in a way that made him instantly want to wrap his hands around it, feel the smallness of it as he spanned the width and length of her.  The fabric rounded the final curve of her hips smoothly, falling finally just below her knee.  He felt a cloud of envy toward the dress, of the contact it had with her every curve, a shape he had committed to memory over and over and over again.  She was walking away in shiny, five inch heels – probably from her suitcase, she always snuck an absurd pair of shoes into her luggage.  He used to tease her that if she needed to reach something, she could just ask.

The sight of her hips swaying, her shoulder blades knashing under the straps as her breasts led – it was undoing him.  Was she meeting someone?  Was she crazy dressing like this alone?  Where was her gun?  He clambered toward the restaurant, stopping only momentarily as a maître d’ handed him a black sports jacket to put over his t-shirt.  Apparently fancy restaurants were equipped with jackets for situations such as this – an unreasonably lovely woman being followed in by an inappropriately dressed stalker.  He had to have a talk with Scully about travel safety, he thought, as he sat at the bar in full view of her.  He didn’t care if she saw him, it would serve her right, he though.  Not even knowing what the hell he meant by that.

 

***

 

She was sipping the bottom of her martini – her second - and preparing to pour the remains of the decanter into her glass when she noticed him at the bar. He was drinking something brown that she knew he couldn’t handle.  What on Earth was he doing here?  Where was that jacket when they were together?  Was he meeting someone?  What if she were meeting someone?  Not that she would meet someone in the lobby of their hotel, she wasn’t cruel, but – but – he was looking directly at her.  He was smoldering, a crisp black collar against his rumpled white shirt that in tandem made her want to hide her hands under the lapels.  This was how Mulder pouted, his eyes halved into sleepy covetous triangles of bright green light.  And he was staring at her, unblinking, unsmiling in a way that told her what she needed to know. _I’m here because of you_.  It rattled her, but she wouldn’t betray that now.  Not in this fucking dress, she wouldn’t.  She willed her cheeks not to redden.

Looking casually away from him back to her table, she picked up her glass and sucked the olive off the toothpick slowly.  Taking her time to lap the underside of it with her mouth, letting it pull her bottom lip out and snap back to her.   She crossed and uncrossed her legs a couple times, dangling a shoe _– that out to do it_ – but it didn’t.

She waited another ten minutes and then gave up, walking toward him, her hips swaying by necessity of the constraints of the dress.

“Stuck at the bar?  No reservation?”          

“By choice. Are you here alone?”

He was exasperating.

“Of course I’m alone, Mulder, is that why you’re sitting here scowling--”

His voice sounded strangely shallow, his words spaced carefully.  “I’ve been watching you all night.  I only meant to stop in for a few minutes, but I’ve been riveted.  I had to know who you were, to… introduce myself.  And now here you are, standing in front of me.  But I can barely bring myself to say my own name.” He peered up at her from his long lashes dreamily.

Scully had watched him make it up as he went along, her chin dropped incredulously to her chest.  It was reminiscent of the monologue he gave in her room last night. But that one was about monsters, and if she hadn’t seen that side of him in a while, she hadn’t seen this one in much longer.   _I cannot fucking believe this_.  Mulder was role-playing her.  She looked at her feet, her metatarsals already going numb, and felt the expensive cloak of invisibility sheathing her body. If there was ever a time...

“A very silly man was here with me, but he – he didn’t have a jacket.  So they threw him out.”  She leaned against the bar so that her other hip jut out, creating a satiny swerve so sharp that Mulder’s eyes darted to it with alarm.  She watched him get lost in the cul-de-sac of her body, feeling certain parts of herself tingle as she followed him there, and then nodded over at her booth.  He walked her back to her it, his hand traveling to a familiar spot on her lower back, sending a familiar charge through to the tip of her nose.

 

***

 

It turned out fake small talk could be as tiresome as the real kind.    After a while, he seemed to be feeling the same fatigue, and he grew quiet, his eyes meeting hers, studying her face, her cleavage, her every move.   Scully licked her lips, trying to recall the taste of him.  They let the atmosphere hang heavy between their eyes, hearing nothing and seeing no one. The spell was broken as the waiter arrived with dessert - a gift from the chef, he said.  Mulder smiled genuinely.  “Still got it, huh?” he asked.  

“Well, if you think it’s meant for me…” she trailed off, pulling it toward her. He laughed – his sexy, relaxed, uncynical one, and got up.  For a moment, she panicked, thinking he might leave, an act of rebellion he’d been waiting to act since the beginning of this whole trip, maybe.  But he slid in next to her, picking up a spoon.

“I needed to be closer.  To it,” he drawled over her shoulder.  As their spoons clanged against the ceramic, dripping vanilla cream onto the table, Mulder put his free arm behind her back, bracing himself on the seat.  His body formed a warm shell around her.  She crossed her legs toward him, shifting closer and looked into his eyes.  The frisson of the fabric of her dress against his jeans caused a twinge in her center that reverberated like a tuning fork.  He leaned forward and – _ooooh_ \- clenched his jaw. She inhaled deeply, waiting for his kiss.  He took another bite instead.  She never thought she would be angry at a piece of cake.

 

***

 

They were standing near the coat check now, and Mulder was handing the jacket back to the hostess.  She wondered if the game was over.  “Can I see you again?” he rasped at her mischievously as they entered the hotel lobby.

Her brain was swimming from the alcohol, the soufflé, his jawline. Was she supposed to accept a date as this fake person and go on it? She barely had the energy for dates as herself.  But she also didn’t have the heart to end this harshly – not after their real relationship had broken them both.   He was walking toward the revolving doors of the hotel, and she smiled thinking of him going through them, waiting for her to be gone, and then coming back in so he could go to his room without spoiling the game.  

“Can I walk you home?  Get you a cab?” he asked.

“I – I’m staying here at the hotel,” she said, unable to resist a giggle.

He nodded.  She waited.  And then for a moment, he was Mulder again and not the stranger – he raised his eyebrows, encouraging her to make her move.   _Ball is in your court, my friend_.

“Would you – would you…”  Her mind rushed through possible combinations of events and their outcomes, it seemed there were so many ways to lose.  But she was on the clock and the game was rushing forward.

Never one to forfeit, Scully ran her tongue across her upper lip.  “Would you like to come up?”

 

***

 

Her tongue sliding nervously across her lip, her hand traveling unconsciously across her abdomen from one hip to the other – it was devastating.  He wanted to kiss her then and there, as he had wanted to in the booth earlier.  But he knew he couldn’t handle it, it wouldn’t be enough, and he didn’t want to get them banned from the place after all his hard work.

He followed her to the elevator and this time, it made sense – the colors, the lighting, the music.  He stood behind her as she pressed the button. Looked down shamelessly over her shoulder into the roundness of her décolleté, chasing the shadowy sliver of darkness squeezed between and under her breasts. The doors opened as a guy in his twenties stepped in, aggressively looked Scully up and down.   Mulder put a hand on her waist possessively, material of her dress bunching between his knuckles.  He didn’t even bother to glare at the guy – Scully herself was punishment enough.

As they made their way down the hallway toward the room, though, he began to regret not taking advantage of the earlier opportunities he’d had to kiss her.  He convinced himself that she would open her door, step inside, and become herself again. She’d slip off her shoes and complain about how much her feet hurt, look for ice, insist the thermostat wasn’t working, walk toward the bathroom in her pantyhose as she unzipped the dress and looked for her pajamas.   Tell him that had been fun but he should go back to his room.   And even then, he would be dying to stay.  To brush his teeth beside her, toss his t-shirt at her and slide into bed next to her, nestle his nose into her hair.

He closed the door behind him hesitantly, prepared to be step out of character upon her demand.  He wasn’t sure who he was about to get.  She turned to face him, backlit by the light outside the window.  She was glowing, on fire, and she was posing for him. One knee slightly bent, her back arched slightly forward, chest rising and falling with her breath, hands drawing slowly up her thighs till they rested on her hips.  This was Scully for sure, just not the version he was expecting. He felt the blood thump in his ears as he stared at her, waiting for her to do or say something.  Her voice was criminally husky when she finally did speak.

“Well, Mulder?  Are you done playing with me?”

He stepped toward her – three steps – until he was close enough she had to tilt her head back to see him.

“No,” he said.  “I think I’d like to play with you all night.”

She walked toward the window, bent over – _oh man,_ she wasn’t wearing pantyhose – and picked something up.  She brought it back to him – the little white bullet.  “I already have a toy,” she said.  He pulled her wrist to his mouth and touched his tongue to the plastic, which is mainly what it tasted like.  But also faintly of her.  It was enough.  His dick ached against his jeans as she got rid of the toy and reached hurriedly for the zipper on the side of her dress.  He stopped her, leaned down and touched his lips to her collarbone.  Not kissing her yet, no tongue, no sucking, just a touch.   He didn’t want to rush, he wanted her to remember it, remember _them_.  She breathed a long, cool breath at his contact, her head tilting so that her forehead touched his ear.  She scrunched up his t-shirt into her fists, causing his nipples to point through the fabric against her chest.

He began to nip very lightly along her shoulder, nudging the strap of the dress down as he reached it.  He lowered his hand over her ass, gathering the material extravagantly, and pulled her into him.  She stumbled a bit, pressing up onto her toes till her heels popped out of those come fuck me shoes, draping an arm around his neck.

She brushed her tongue along the roof of his mouth, coaxing him forward.  He gave her his own and traced her teeth, tasted the vodka mixed into her hot saliva.  She came up for a breath, resting her nose and grasping his face in both hands.  Their mouths barely touched, but their tongues reached for each other.  She hummed with pleasure and he nearly melted into a puddle.  It was one thing to listen to her make sounds – it was another to _feel_ her make them.  

She slid her hand down his chest, flipped her fingers toward the floor, the base of her palm cresting the bulge in his pants.

“Mm.  How long have you had this?”

“Ever since the olive,” he said with a small smile. It was a girlish curiosity she never lost – wanting knowledge of erections and her impact on them.   Sometimes he exaggerated for the joy of exciting her as much as possible.  Right now, no exaggeration was necessary.   It had been a long evening.  She finally was squeezing him in her graceful hand, proposing with every part of her body to do very ungraceful things to him.  She dropped his jeans around his knees and the tip of his penis poked through his underwear, nudging her above her belly button.

 “Your new dress,” he said.

“What about it?”

“What are you wearing under it?”  

“Nothing.  Nothing else fit.”

“I could come right now, Scully.”

“Do not come on this dress.”

He pulled back out of her hand, clutching her to him and unzipping the dress.  He slipped his hand inside and she shimmied, helping him, holding his mouth to hers as she fell backward and pulled him stumbling out of his shoes and jeans.  A laugh escaped her mouth, chafed red from his lips, and she steadied herself against the window.  For the first time, he realized they were a bit drunk, and that this might not be the best idea.  Then again, they were also pretending to be completely different people.  There had to be some kind of canceling out of unhealthy choices.

The dress pooled around her shoes.  Her blue eyes lit up the dark room as the urban light sparked in them.   She was completely naked, except for the shoes.  He moved toward her, studying her, and moved his hand along her spine, feeling her shiver, resisting the urge to cup her breast, to drop to his knees, to nail her against the window.   He reached one long finger past her clit and inside her.

“Oh, Scully,” he said.  “How long have you had that?”

She folded into him in response as he slipped it in and out of her.   _In and out.  In and out._ She swayed gently back and forth in tandem with his finger, like a puppet on a string.  A very, very willing puppet.  She seemed so vulnerable just then that he pulled her closer, still giving leverage the priority.  She bit the top of his shoulder, stifling a sound.

 “Don’t do that,” he said and she bit him harder. “No, I mean, don’t hold back.  I heard you.  Last night, I heard you, Scully.”      

Apparently annoyed, she tensed a bit against his finger. “You’ll have to earn that if you want it,” she chided.  

He shoved a second finger inside her and pulled forward against the wall of her body. _Come here…. Come here… come here_ , he signaled.  And she obeyed, gasping, waiting for her reward.  He smiled, took his fingers away, watching her brow knit as she hungrily backed him onto the bed.  He pulled at her ass ‘til she was upward dog-ging over his chest.  She kicked a heel up and grazed his knuckles with a shoe. He pulled his shirt off hastily, excited by the idea of her breasts brushing against his skin.

She searched for his hardness, pressing her hips into him. “Ready,” she said. He flipped her to her back, holding her hands up above her head, elastic of his underwear snapping loudly against his skin as she let it go.  “Not yet.”  He ran his tongue along lengths of her upper body.  She arched her back, pushing her tits to his face.  She was still a fighter.

He took one nipple into his teeth, pressing it between his top lip and tongue until it was firm.  “Please,” she begged.  He closed his teeth further around the tender pink skin, very carefully, just the amount of pressure.  Firm enough to be a threat or a promise.  She whimpered as she raised her hips and dropped them angrily when he drew back from her, so that the tip of him only grazed her belly.  She pulled his erection completely through the slit in his briefs and positioned him at her entrance.  There was a hot throbbing in the infinitesimal space between their bodies, two piano strings left to draw out a chord.  She stared into his eyes, challenging him to resist her.  And he managed.

He laid down beside her.  She punched the bed as her fists landed beside her.  “What is this?” she whined.

“Get on your knees, Scully,” he said.

She took a few breaths, processing the frustration of a moment ago.  He heard the shoes drops to the floor.  When she looked at him, there was a naughty smile on her face and her eyes nearly rolled back into her head from the pressure of desire.

 

***

 

She was staring at the ceiling and his mouth was against her pussy, her knees straddled around his shoulders.  She was dripping onto his face as he wiggled the tip of his tongue against her opening. With each drop of moisture, he moaned softly into her, sending his oxygen into her veins.  He spoke, moving his lips against her clit.  “Come on, Scully.  Play.”

 Every ounce of tension in her body ran screaming away from her, and she sank onto his mouth, pressing her fingernails into the tops of her thighs.  He reached a hand up her stomach to her breast, squeezing gently.  She brought his finger to her mouth and sucked it, worried it with her tongue, wanting him to picture her doing it to his cock.  He must have, because he groaned powerfully as he kissed along the tendon connecting her pelvis to her thigh, back to her clit, circling it with his tongue till it was slick and swollen as she had ever remembered it being.  

She began to roll her hips back and forth against him as he flattened his tongue, his full bottom lip nudging her clit at each turn, her ass grazing his chin.   She ran her fingertips through his hair and he brought both lips around her clit, sucking it.  “Oh my – God –  Oh my – feels – so – fucking – amazing -“  He was watching her as she raised one hand to her forehead, the other up the side of her face into her hair, wanting it to be his.  

She collapsed on top of him. It was only a moment before she rolled over, giving him a view of the bottom of her ass as she crawled weakly, dragging her knees till she could prop herself on her elbows and take his cock into her mouth.

“We can leave it at that, Scully,” he said tenderly.

She arched her upper body so that her nipples rested at the base of his penis, licked him.  “Nevermind,” he said and she reveled in the sound of his voice growing dirtier, heavier. She gave him a last, long suck and slid forward a little further, pressing him between her full breasts. She kept him there as she raised herself from her elbows, and was about to slide back down, but he squeezed the arch of her foot.  “Good Chriiiist, Scully,” he said sharply. _“Don’t._ ” She laughed wantonly.  “Why?”

“I need a minute.”  He pulled her off.

 

***

 

She was looking at him impatiently, glistening with sweat, leaning against the muscles in his arm.  He ran outstretched fingers along her ribs, thought of a branch across the bars of a fence, trying to allow his cock some time to re-gather its strength.

“I missed you,” he said.  Past tense, as if the suffering was over and they were back to normal, healed.  He saw that it was more than she could handle, and she kissed him instead, mouth flush to his, tongue deep inside him.  She was done seducing, now she was trying to lose herself.  

“I missed you,” he repeated as she lifted one leg over his torso and spread a streak of glossy stickiness down his abdominal muscles.   Her eyes suddenly glinted with pain.  

“How could you miss me?  You just met me downstairs,” she said.  “I’m a perfect stranger.”

“Perfect, yes.”

“I’m a stranger and you’ve never been inside me,” she insisted.          

He was weary of the game, but weakened by the sight of her, by the torture he’d been withstanding since he first laid eyes on her in the dress.  “What does this stranger want?” he asked.

 

***

 

She lowered her mouth to his ear and nibbled it, the soft point of her top lip filling the canal, fingers playing against it like a harp.  She rested her other hand softly on his cock, the slightest touch possible, getting into position so she could feel the twitch.  Then she whispered, “She wants to fuck you into tomorrow morning.”   _Twitch_.  In fact, his entire torso contracted,  curved for her.  She squeezed him firmly and he thrashed his head to the side.

She slid him inside her with a sharp breath as he gripped the back of her neck and her ass tensely.  She squealed a bit as she tried to consume as much of him as she could.  It had been a while, and she felt almost like she really was a stranger. Someone who had no idea she was about to be torn in two.  There was a flash behind her eyes the gleeful shock of the first time, as the pain seared through her, the way she savored it in anticipation of pleasure.

She pushed the memory from her mind to make room for the stranger.  She sat upright and began to ride him hard, looking him dead in the eye, feeling exotic, wanting him more the more he searched for her. She was performing, dragging her hands up the length of her body to her tits, circling her nipples with the tips of her fingers as she rose and fell onto him again and again.   He wanted to be turned on by _her_ , and not the show she was putting on, she knew this - but he was finding it difficult to separate them.  That was her intention.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, sounding too real.

“I can feel you in my throat,” she purred.  He groaned.

“You’re so fucking tight,” he marveled.  “Perfect stranger,” he added ruefully.

She swiveled her hips, whimpering, taking him in even deeper.

“Scully… Oh God… Scully – please –“

“Please what?”          

“Just tell me.  Tell me you missed this.”

“Ssssh,” she said as he ran his fingers through her hair.

“Tell me.”      

 “No.”

With that, he shot up, grabbing her by the shoulders, and threw her off him to the bed.  She smiled wickedly.  

 

***

 

“I’m not playing anymore.  I want you, I don’t want the stranger.  Say my name like you did last night.  Tell me I’m yours.”

She opened her mouth but didn’t speak.  She strained up to kiss him.  When he backed away, she looked down past his heart into his soul.  He could have cried if his dick wasn’t sucking every ounce of energy and fluid he had from him.  “Say it,” he demanded and he thought she was about to.

“Fuck me,” she begged.  Refusing, he caressed the side of her face with his palm as she rolled onto her side beneath him, his dick bouncing against her hip as she rolled fully onto her stomach.  

“Fuck me, what?” he argued into her ear.  She turned her cheek up to him, tossing her hair over her the side of her head.

“Fuck me.  Please?”

“Say it, Scully.  Or I swear to God, I’ll leave you here with that piece of plastic.”

Laughter rumbled breathlessly up her throat and she wiggled her ass against his cock.

“Fuck me.  Hard.”

He spread his hand across her pussy, one finger over her clit, one inside her, one along the crack of her ass, wearing her like a glove. She moaned practically a paragraph-worth.  When he took the glove off, she bit her bottom lip and grunted.  The profile of her face was angelic, ivory and coated with shadows. She hissed before she spoke.

“Fuck me, Mulder.”

At the sound of his name, he entered her, pulling the cheeks of her ass toward him, gripping her hip bones.  She was making sounds he had not heard in a long time – certainly not last night when she was alone.  Her voice rolled and twisted in a heavenly agony of desire.  She stretched her arms out long in front of her, gripping the sheets. He leaned forward and slid both arms under her, holding her tight against his chest and pulling her back with him, his cock sliding out just slightly as he positioned her on her knees, in his lap, and rocked with her.  He held one forearm diagonally across her body, protecting her and consuming her, and brought the other hand to her clit, massaging the slick surface.  “Yesssss….” She moaned.  “Yessss, oh, please, yes…..”

She banged the back of her head on his shoulder.          

“Make me come,” she commanded.  She sounded like herself.  He would not last long.

He squeezed her tight, his hand cupped tightly around her breast, and turned his face to kiss her.  She indulged him a moment but pulled her tongue away to speak.  

“Fuck, Mulder, just…  Give it to me,” she said.  She reached one arm forward against the headboard, gaining the leverage to impale herself deeper onto him.  She ran the full length of his cock with every lap, and he held her at the waist, his other hand loyally working her clit, kneading it, turning it over and over. Her body trembled. 

He nearly knocked the wind out of her with a final thrust, repeating her name over and over into her hair as he came inside her.   “You’re so fucking hard Mulder, fuck, yesssssss, ohhhhh,” she uttered in a wave of goddess-like strength that simmered into a sleepy hum.

***

He fell beside her curling her backward and spooning around her.  The room smelled like a rainforest of wet, mossy, living things.  She caught his eye in the reflection, taking his breath away.   He breathed her in deeply.

“Mmmmmm,” he said. “Or is that the candle again? If it’s the candle, I’m buying it. I’m bringing it to the office.  Along with that toy you’re going to have to pay for.”    

There was a holy pause.  

“I missed you too,” she said.  He closed his mouth around her shoulder, pulling her skin to mesh with his own, blinking into her fragile shoulder bone.  She wrapped her arms around his arms and tangled her legs in his.  They clung to one another as if they could stop the sun from rising if they only held on tight enough. 

***                                

The sun was coming up.  They had dozed off and now both sat up, desperate for the first time all evening for something besides one another - a sink, a toilet, a shower.  They each picked up remnants of clothing, he his briefs, she pulling his t-shirt over her head.   He grabbed the hem of it lazily, snapping her back and spinning her around, cradling her ass as she stood on her tiptoes against him, yawning.

“You’ve already got enough of my t-shirts, Scully.”

“This one’s not yours, it belongs to a stranger I brought up here.”

“Are you going to come home?” he asked.  He knew he shouldn’t, but the soft weight of her in his hands, the salty humidity of her breath --

“No,” she said simply and walked into the bathroom.  “But I may let you make more hotel reservations,” she called back. She turned the shower on and left the door open.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked it, feel free to make my day and tell me about it. Here, on tumblr as @somekindofseizure, or at somekindofseizure@gmail.com.


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